VOUCHERS: Rob Dakin writes, “Do you know who vouchers will end up benefitting? Not rural people such as my neighbors here in the foothills of Appalachia, who have no alternative schools to send their kids to, voucher or no voucher. No. The majority of the people who would benefit from a voucher system would be folks on the edge of the upper middle class, living in relatively affluent areas where private schools with high standards have already been established, and who, once they receive the voucher, would be able to afford to send their kid to that private school that was formerly just beyong the scope of their budget. This seems to me to be obvious. Whether the funding source is federal, state, or private, the same situation would exist. The people in most need will not be the ones who get the benefit.

“Inner-city parents, as opposed to rural ones, differ, in that cities can be expected to have both private schools and parochial schools available as alternatives to the public school system. The problem still remains, however, that if every public school child suddenly has the means to pay for tuition funded schooling, where will the necessary seats and faculty and private classrooms to accommodate all those children come from? And how will it be funded? How will it be made equitable? The basic idea of a voucher system is very attractive, but the nuts and bolts of implementing a fair and universally accessible voucher system quickly become more problematic than simply upgrading the public schools, in my opinion as a parent with school-aged children.”

OK. There are a lot of things going on here. I’m going to address a bunch of them very fast, but I will probably miss some of the underlying assumptions or points that I would dispute, and I won’t be going into much detail since at the moment I’m kind of vouchered out. But:

1) Presumably Dakin doesn’t think that all public school programs should run the same way, across the country, a cookie-cutter series of programs. So why should he assume that voucher proponents want to institute the exact same program everywhere? Different areas will have different needs. I think that as the success of inner-city vouchers becomes more evident, more and more places will want to try vouchers, and so the conditions that currently make vouchers a bad idea in some areas (not enough private schools, etc.) will gradually erode. I don’t want to force that process–I don’t advocate a voucher wildfire sweeping through every county in the USA right this instant. I want to let that process happen at a relatively slow pace. I want vouchers to come fast to the places where there is an enormous need for alternatives to public school and where there is sufficient supply of those alternatives (= cities, generally). Suburban areas typically have the latter condition but not always the former. Rural areas may lack both conditions. So I don’t think that the same methods or pacing would apply to every area.

2) Vouchers won’t cover the whole cost of a private-school education. Well, Dakin does note that vouchers might cover (typically relatively cheap) parochial education. I’d also add that vouchers are not the only source of tuition money for poor families. A voucher makes other trade-offs possible. It’s the same as federal grant money for college tuition: Without a grant, someone may not even be able to consider attending a ritzy private university. With a grant, that same person may well be able to combine grant + financial aid + scholarship program + working two jobs over the summer–the grant puts her over the top so she can afford a better school. Similarly, even if a voucher does not fully cover tuition, it can make scrimping and hunting for scholarships more worthwhile. Sort of like matching grants, where I raise $50 and my employer matches with an additional $50. I’m not sure why I really need to point this out, since the people clamoring for vouchers are clamoring because they know the additional money makes a difference. Dakin also doesn’t take into account the possibility of means-tested voucher programs, but that’s a whole ‘nother kettle of fish.

3) If every public school kid can pay for private school, where will the new private school desks, teachers, etc. come from? Well, first off, I find it interesting that this question assumes that a large number of families really want to pull their kids out of public school! That aside, this claim rests on a picture of a static amount of possible private schooling. Public schooling, in this view, is suddenly yanked away with the onset of vouchers, leaving private schools to deal with an impossible flood of new applicants. What actually happens, where vouchers have been tried, is a lot more dynamic: Some students switch to private schools. Some private schools add spots. Lots of kids remain in private school. The amount of private schooling available slowly increases, as schools build on the new possibilities opened by vouchers.

4) How will it be made equitable? It won’t, if “equitable” means everyone has the same shot at an excellent education. That isn’t happening now, won’t happen with vouchers, and can’t happen without huge changes to the education system which are almost certainly impossible and would definitely have major negative side-effects. I do think vouchers help make excellent or adequate educations more available to people who otherwise would not be able to attain them. So I guess I’d need to know what’s meant by “equitable” before I can really comment.

5) Upgrading the public schools: I expect that whether this is easier than implementing vouchers very much depends on where you live and what your state and local regulations are like; see point #1.

6) I’d like to point out, also, that while there are difficulties inherent in any voucher program, there are also enormous difficulties inherent in a non-voucher system. To take only one example (though one that’s extremely important), without vouchers it is much easier for a rich family to find a school that reflects their values than for a poor family. Again, I don’t expect perfection here–many families won’t be able to find any school that perfectly reflects their values, and rich families, in general, will still have all kinds of advantages. But right now, poor families, unless they can get a hefty chunk of financial aid, are stuck with schools whose ability to teach ethics and character is constrained by the First Amendment and held hostage by local political disputes. Cf. the enormous fights over “abstinence-based education” as vs. condoms-in-classrooms. I’ve written about some of these issues here and here.